Chapter 45 Notes from Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin Chapter 45

The final chapter consists of the author's comments on slavery. She explains to the readers, that while the novel is a work of fiction, several of the characters and situations are based on factual events (especially the anecdote about a planter who bragged that his fist was rough from "knocking down niggers," a line that the character Legree delivers verbatim). She implores north and south alike to find it in their conscience to reject slavery, and lists several freed slaves that her brother personally knows as examples of what blacks can accomplish outside the bonds of slavery. She ends the book with a stern warning about what will happen if north and south do not work together to end slavery:

"A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved,--but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!" Chapter 45, pg. 447